Learn about structuring startups correctly with Jessica Zwaan, covering operations, finance for non-experts, and non-paternalism at work. Explore team management, COO responsibilities, global workforce challenges, and creating engaging workshop titles. Delve into the transition to law school, dual roles in operations jobs, and the importance of accountability in organizational design.
Organizational design should focus on commercial aspects, treat employee experience as valuable product.
Remote work policies should be intentional, solving real problems, offer choices based on employee needs.
Establish clear organizational design principles to build cohesive organization, prevent conflicts among functional leaders.
Deep dives
Overview of the Podcast Episode
In this podcast episode, Carol Griffin interviews Jessica Zwan, a COO at Wearby, about her unique perspective on running teams and her new book.
The Value of a Commercial COO
Jessica describes her role as a commercial COO, emphasizing the importance of being customer-focused and output-driven. She believes in thinking about operations with a commercial lens, treating the employee experience as a valuable product. Additionally, she remains hands-on in various aspects of the business, staying involved in customer support, sprint planning, and weekly business reviews.
Navigating Remote Work and Legal Considerations
Jessica shares her insights on managing a remote workforce and discusses how whereby offers choices to employees for different employment contracts based on their needs. She highlights the importance of being intentional about the company's remote work policies and ensuring they effectively solve real problems for the team. Jessica also draws on her legal background to navigate the areas of employment law and remote work implications.
Organizational Design Principles
The speaker emphasizes the importance of establishing organizational design principles as a leadership team to build a cohesive and effective organization. These principles include deciding on the level of hierarchy, the desired level of specialization in team members, and the preference for junior or senior employees. Having a clear set of principles helps make cohesive choices and prevents conflicts when different functional leaders have conflicting preferences.
Hours Agnostic and Autonomous Culture
The podcast episode discusses the importance of creating a strong culture of non-parentalism in a fully remote work environment. The speaker shares their experience at WebI, where they have embraced a culture of being hours agnostic, allowing employees to work at any time that suits them. This decision requires hiring senior and self-managing individuals who can handle the autonomy and take ownership of their work. The episode emphasizes the importance of giving employees the freedom to choose how they want to work while providing them with all the necessary information to make informed decisions about their employment contracts.
Learn how to structure your startup correctly from the get-go by digging into organizational design with Jessica Zwaan, a self-described "commercial COO." She has lots to teach us about everything from running operations like a product team, to mastering finance when you don't have a numbers background, and even practicing non-paternalism at work. Tune in to learn best practices you can implement in your own work!
Show Notes
Show notes and a full transcript of this episode is available at opsy.work.
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